Observing rurality of a geographical area from road graph geometry -- a qualitative study

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Luisto, Rami
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Luisto, Rami
author_facet Luisto, Rami
contents In this paper we analyze the Finnish road network as a graph in order to measure whether the "rurality" or "urbanity" of an area correlates with local geometrical properties of the graph. Our primary motivation is the observation that the road systems in rural areas look similar to hyperbolic graphs, while in large cities they resemble more the Cayley graph of $\mathbb{Z}^2$. We do not aim for a comprehensive analysis, but rather wish to demonstrate that this observation can be measured and analyzed through looking at various "hyperbolicity measures" of randomly sampled geodesic triangles in the road graph.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_12006
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Observing rurality of a geographical area from road graph geometry -- a qualitative study
Luisto, Rami
Physics and Society
History and Overview
Metric Geometry
51F99, 00A05, 90B20
In this paper we analyze the Finnish road network as a graph in order to measure whether the "rurality" or "urbanity" of an area correlates with local geometrical properties of the graph. Our primary motivation is the observation that the road systems in rural areas look similar to hyperbolic graphs, while in large cities they resemble more the Cayley graph of $\mathbb{Z}^2$. We do not aim for a comprehensive analysis, but rather wish to demonstrate that this observation can be measured and analyzed through looking at various "hyperbolicity measures" of randomly sampled geodesic triangles in the road graph.
title Observing rurality of a geographical area from road graph geometry -- a qualitative study
topic Physics and Society
History and Overview
Metric Geometry
51F99, 00A05, 90B20
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.12006